Spellscribed: Resurgence (14 page)

An archer appeared on a rooftop overlooking the street and let loose an arrow before the swarm could react. The arrow hit the queen's carapace with a thud and stuck, thin layers of blackened chitin cracking and falling off where the arrow had hit. The man tried to duck back into the trap door that he had been hiding under, but two of the queen's guard had seen him. The man pulled the door closed as the two guards leapt into the air. One landed on the roof, while the other misjudged the distance and crashed into the wall on the second floor. The one on the roof raised it's scythe-like forelimbs and plunged them into the trapdoor, while the one that hit the wall screeched and tore into the wall, burrowing into the room in seconds.

Bridget wished she could cover her ears to stop the screams. There had been more than one person in that room. After a few seconds, there were none. She did notice though, that the archer had been somewhat successful. The queen's carapace looked burnt and cracked, like it had been exposed to a fire that had nearly destroyed one side of her body. The ordinarily impenetrable carapace had been baked into a more fragile state, the strata of organic armor breaking off in small sheets. She understood now why the queen was leading from the back, when the one they had encountered had no qualms about going on the attack.

There was something about the way they acted that made her think of Endrance. As they advanced closer to the center of Ironsoul, the queen would screech commands, and swarms of sand hornets would focus their attention on particular clusters of targets. She knew from having spent weeks in Ironsoul that certain places would be well defended, but the sand hornets shouldn't have known where the military fallback points were, much less how they were defended.

There was also the fact that she saw that the hornets let people go. As long as they stayed out of the way, and did not strike any of the hornets, they were leaving them alone. She watched as one soldier stood alone, his armor clattering from fear as he had frozen in the battlefield. The hornets passed him by, occasionally one going around him, like he was nothing but a stick shoved into a stream. The man looked up as the queen passed, and then saw Bridget walking with the swarm.

She scowled at him, but was too tired to put much energy behind it. "You." she said, just loud enough for him to hear her over the chaos. "If you leave them alone then you will live. Go. Run. Hide."

The man managed to nod before cautiously backing away from the stream of deadly insects. Once free, he tossed his spear down and ran, disappearing down the streets.

Bridget gave the same order to nearly twenty other soldiers she found pinned by fear. They were the fortunate ones, for their fear had prevented them from attacking at all. Most all fled, but a couple found her presence enough to spur them to fight, and they were quickly slain. She felt a pang of guilt for their deaths. Was it even a fair battle? She mentally shook her head. No, the swarm was of a magnitude more like an environmental hazard.

Still, sand hornets were dying in droves. While they could bear down on and overpower most defenses, it was still at the cost of their lives. The sky seemed lighter now, but Bridget heard another one of the crystals on the outer walls go down. Another shot hit a hornet mid air, and in the distance bits of exploded drone rained down on the merchant's district, along with the bodies of three other hornets that had been too close.

Bridget was slowly losing strength. She had been carrying Tanya on her shoulder for nearly an hour, and she had already been worn down by days of hard riding leading up to the assault. Everything was going too fast, and her head was practically spinning from the rapid changes.

The queen's guard screeched and rushed ahead, spearheading the assault on the capitol building. The elite warriors, the ones that had worn magical armor and weapons, had proven to be capable of killing drones as fast as they came. Though they fought hard, the swarm eventually overwhelmed them, at the cost of all but three of the queen's personal guard. Bridget stepped over the magically armored bodies as drones tried to pick them apart, to no avail.

The throne room of the High King of Ironsoul was sized appropriate to his station. It was centered on the great domed building at the center of the city, and the dome was entirely just for the throne room. A polished white stone floor provided a sensation of brightness in the circular room. The chamber was easily fifty yards across, with the thrones of the room set in the back. Five yards from the outer walls a ring of stone pillars supported the dome.

The throne room was draped in black banners, and a black shroud had been draped over the throne. The other eight smaller thrones that flanked the large one on either side were entirely for show; the kings of their satraps had hardly any reason or ability to rule from the capitol.

The drones broke into the throne room with a crash, and finding no one to battle, set about spreading out through the room. Several drones began tearing apart the doors and the stone frames around them, allowing more and more light into the room, but also making room for larger hornets to follow. The three surviving guards entered next, taking position in the center. The queen entered, surveyed the room, and screeched in a tone only a little bit louder than Bridget was able to tolerate. Though massive enough to blot out the sunlight pouring through the new hole in the wall, the dome had some kind of light that seemed to pour down from up high as if there were windows along the top of the dome.

The Draugnoa watched from the back as the queen and her royal guardians began assaulting the stone of the floor in the center, hacking and chipping away at it. While they did so, the drones would slip in lightning-quick, snatch up the bits of stone knocked free, and drag them out. The queen and her servants dug frenetically, not even caring or slowing down when one of their drones was just a hair too slow. Those corpses were dragged out by others to be torn apart and consumed by the living.

Very quickly, a sloped hole appeared in the throne room, with piles of white stone chips building up along the outer walls. The queen and her royal guardians slipped farther and farther into the ground as they dug, and Bridget looked at the hole before following. She considered Tanya on her shoulders and grit her teeth. If Endrance was down there, she might need to carry him out. She took a steadying breath and walked over to the throne. The only one big enough for her to lay Tanya across comfortably was the one with the black banners.

Bridget laid Tanya across the broad seat of the throne and then grabbed her large cleaver. Pulling it free, she eyed the hornets around her and took a careful step back. She waited for the instant a hornet would make a move for the unconscious woman, so she could cut it down. Several moments passed, and she noticed that while the hornets were still working on their excavation project, they didn't come close to the thrones. Bridget scowled, putting her weapon away. She would have to trust them. Just to be safe, she grabbed the edge of one of the banners and pulled, tearing it down. She carefully covered Tanya's unconscious body after checking to make sure she was still alive. At least now, she would be moderately safe from harm. After all, who would try to get to her through all the sand hornets?

The sounds of digging stopped, and drones started filing down into the hole. Bridget kept her hand on her weapons, and descended, stepping into line and following them into the darkness. She didn't have to go more than twenty yards forward and ten down before the tunnel broke into a subterranean chamber. This chamber had strange quartz crystals mounted on the walls in brackets that looked similar to the ones that the elves had used. Bridget pulled one out of the bracket, holding it in her left hand while she hefted her weapon in the other. The walls were hand-carved, but it was so well done it appeared to have been smooth at first.

If there had been furnishings in the room, they had been destroyed by the entry the queen and her followers had made. Bridget caught up to the swarm as drones poured down a ten foot wide passage. The queen stood still, waving about unsteadily as she waited. Bridget wasn't sure what gave her the feeling, but she was almost certain that the creature was not very healthy anymore.

The drones must have found something, because the queen trilled to her guards, and they began to dig again. The queen joined in, this time burrowing at a steeper angle. Bridget waited while they dug. Bridget started to lean against a wall, but her eyelids started to droop even with the sound of stone being chipped away at amazing speed, screeching insects, and still being upright. She shook her head, pushing off the wall and pacing while the sand hornets cleared the way. Many minutes passed as she waited.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Endrance." she said. "Because a lot of people have died today."

There was the sound of rock collapsing, and a strange blue light filtered up from the tunnel the hornets had been digging. As Bridget cautiously picked her way down the long passage, she became well aware of how sore she was. The burning ache of fatigue spread through all her limbs, and even her wooden limb was feeling wrung out, which was its way of telling her it was almost to the limits.

The blue light intensified suddenly, and a crackle could be heard coming up the tunnel. In the distance, she could hear screeching. The fine hairs on the back of her arms started rising, a tingle becoming prevalent across the surface of her skin as she got closer to the chamber.

The tunnel broke out into a chamber twelve feet high. The place was huge, a dome almost mirroring the style of the throne room above, though many times larger. In the center of the chamber was a gleaming silver half-sphere set into the floor that crackled with lightning. The queen's drones were assaulting it feverishly, and getting fried in the process. Each drone struck by the lightning burst into flames, scattering flaming viscera and chitin everywhere.

As she approached, Bridget noticed the blue light in the room steadily fading as wave after wave of drones died chopping at the metal surface. At first, Bridget thought all they were doing was scoring the surface, she started to see lines of pulsing blue light gleaming through cracks between the arcs of lightning.

More and more hornets attacked the sphere, and dozens more poured into the room behind her to reinforce the dwindling numbers. Smoke was rising to fill the top of the domed ceiling like dark thunderclouds. Just how many were going to die to achieve their goal?

A crack widened, and the pulsing of electric death seemed to weaken just as the swarms of drones reduced to a trickle. The dead insects were so numerous, so badly burnt, that the living couldn't consume them. The smell choked Bridget, but she stayed. There was no way she was backing out now.

The queen screeched, but this time no more drones came. They had either all died off, or had been held up by the human troops outside. After only a second of hesitation, she and her royal guards assaulted the cracked sphere. The electrical defenses were not able to pulse anymore, but thrummed with a lower power, constantly on discharge.

Lightning crackled across the queen and her guards, but the three hit the sphere hard just before the queen crashed into it. Rebounded and shocked, they managed to survive to lunge again. The crack widened, and by the time only the queen remained, Bridget estimated a man could crawl through it.

Shuddering, and most likely already dying, the queen wedged her scythe like limbs into the crack. She screeched one last time as she hauled with her dying effort, and with a sickening crunch broke off one of her talons in the act of wrenching the metal crack open wider. The sand hornet queen flailed as she fell back, her limbs twitching and waving as ichor spattered from the broken limb. Bridget stared, dumbfounded, as the mighty creature died, leaving her alone in a room that had gone dark save for the crystal in her hand.

She took a hesitant step forward, and then another. If she was the only one left, then it fell to her to...

A strange faint golden light erupted from the queen's body, a torrent of luminous wind that swirled around the body before siphoning into the crack formed by her death throes. Bridget stopped, a hand to her mouth.

From within the crack, a bright golden light illuminated the darkness. She recognized the shape to be similar to Endrance's tattoos, the only thing visible in the dark until he walked slowly and unsteadily into her crystal's light.

Endrance, emaciated, bone thin, scruffy faced, and completely naked, gave her a wan smile. The tattoos could hardly be considered tattoos anymore. Every line on his bare skin was carved into his flesh, instead of drawn. From those grooves a golden fire pulsed like embers. He still had the bracers on his arms, and the orange crystals set in the silver pulsed in time with his burning meridians.

"Hey," he whispered with a raspy voice. "Got out."

Something snapped inside of Bridget's head. It might have been the exhaustion, the lack of sleep; perhaps the insanity of it all, but she found herself shaking her head and glaring at him.

"Oh the hells you have!" She shouted, pointing. "Get your bony ass back in there so I can rescue you!"

Endrance weakly shook his head. "No," he replied immediately. "You get your ass back out there so you can see me free myself!" He rasped.

He swayed on his feet, blinked, and looked at himself. He looked back up at her, the light of his tattoos fading frighteningly quickly.

"How about a compromise?" He asked.

Then, Endrance collapsed like a puppet with his strings cut. Bridget managed to catch him, and for a split second marveled at how she'd held weapons heavier than him. The mage's head lolled, as if all supports had taken leave of his neck. Bridget heard him breathing shallowly, so at least he was alive.